The University of Texas – El Paso sits on a ridge overlooking a tangled mess of highway overpasses and freight lines, down on to the Anapra neighborhood of Ciudad Juarez. It is for the residents of the latter, the poorest sector of El Paso’s sister city, a constant reminder of the education and progress afforded “Americans”—a future that is at once, painfully close and impossibly far away for the children who stand clutching the thick metals bars of their continental prison. This desert, reeking of death and stained with the blood of Mexican and Central American migrants, punctuated only by jagged mountain peaks that protrude from the brushland like the jaws of a crocodile, once concealed a network of hideouts used by the Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa. Now it's a graveyard.

“Juarez is constantly on fire – the missing women, the cartel wars – and its artists are soaked in the ashes of this burning,” says Monica Lozano, a Mexican American photographer who has documented the border and migrant crossings for 18 years. She becomes emotional when talking about the thousands of missing and murdered women in Juarez, cases that since the late-1990s have been neglected and unsolved, eclipsed by the extreme violence of the cartel wars that erupted in 2011. Monica wraps up her uneaten burrito: “I lose my appetite thinking of this,” she says, followed by a painful chuckle.

Along the Mexican side of the border wall, we detour on to a barren dirt road that leads us to an escarpment looking out over El Paso—a cold, poisonous, metal snake winding through the desert as far as the eye can see. Every day, thousands of Mexicans and Americans cross at one of the four checkpoints along the Rio Grande to work, shop, trade, or visit family on the other side. The people crossing are used to being exploited, their bodies bearing the brunt of American imperialism manifest in the so-called “war on drugs.” Juarez was at one point considered one the most dangerous cities in the world, and El Paso one of the safest. The contradiction is glaring.

Walking in the brush, we happen upon a pile of teddy bears. Nearby, dozens of articles of clothing, seemingly frozen in time swirling ominously in the dust. How did they end up all together? What happened to each of the small humans who hugged them while being dragged through this scorching desert heat? Monica crouches to the ground and snaps photographs for her on-going body of work 

In the recent past, “replacement theory” inspired hate speech oozing from conservative right-wing politicians has resulted in increased anti-Mexican sentiments and corollary violence. In 2019, a 21-year-old white male who had published a white supremacist manifesto on 8chan, gunned down dozens of customers at the Cielo Vista Walmart Supercenter in El Paso, killing 23 and injuring 22 others. At the time it was the worst crime against the Latino community in US history. There is no doubt that virulent statements made by the former president continues to fuel the churning hatred of his acolytes, rabid bigots who believe themselves to be the rightful inheritors of the land their ancestors stole from Mexicans. The absurdity is astounding.

Crossing the pedestrian bridge from Juarez to El Paso, it’s hard not to notice that most of the TSA, police and border patrol are Mexican American. The transition from colorful, textured Juarez to the seemingly endless strip mall that is El Paso is surreal. And there standing on the wall, the “

,” a pejorative meaning sellouts or traitors, act as proxies for their white overlords, paid and promoted to subjugate their own people. The militarized abscess of the border does not warrant optimism, yet there are those like Monica who continue to bring humanity back to their communities through their artistic practice. Committed to the uphill battle for their people’s collective dignity they challenge the dominant, racist narrative by capturing the lived experiences of communities. It seems for many, that any hope for the future of El Paso lies in the soul of its sister city. Monica says: “Juarez has two hearts, its own, and another for the one that is missing in El Paso.”

All images are the sole ownership of Monica Lozano and cannot be republished or reprinted without her consent. To view her work, please visit: www.

A Tale of Two Realities

JANUARY 2023, NORTH OF IRELAND

Birth of La Trenza, Pt. 1

MAY 8, 2023, CIUDAD JUAREZ-EL PASO BORDER

Birth of La Trenza, Pt. 2

We arrived late, and though jet-lagged, we were ecstatic to be in Ireland for the first time. Our friend, singer-songwriter Declan McLaughlin, had arranged a homestay for us to better understand the history of the civil rights struggle and enduring activism in Derry City in the North of Ireland. Paul O'Connor and his amazing family took us in despite the enormous size of our luggage filled with "just in case" objects, mezcal bottles, and gifts from Mexico. The fact that they had invited one Mexican (me) and four had arrived was already becoming a bit of a screwball comedy, but traveling only a few days in Ireland had shown us that Mexican and Irish humor is very similar. We have both grown thick skin and the capacity to maintain humor in the face of tragedy.

The Bloody Sunday’s Trust commemorative events at the Free Derry Corner and the Museum of Free Derry inspired us profoundly. The movement is a beacon of remembrance and continued learning about what happened during the conflict and the events of that fateful Sunday morning in January fifty-one years ago. Many painful questions arose among us as we confronted the atrocious scale of lives lost crossing borders--religious or political--in Mexico and beyond. How can 

 speak about the thousands of lives lost on the frontier? How is a community like Derry capable of honoring them in such a profound way? And what meaning(s) can we derive from the stories of those migrants who managed to survive crossing or lay buried in the desert?

En route to the opening of my exhibition 

, we walked the streets of the old walled city of Derry in silence, before encountering a mural of a young girl, Annette McGavigan, who had been shot dead by the British Army at age 14. The mural ignited our collective memory of Daisy, a girl in Glenwood Springs, Colorado, who had crossed the border from Mexico to the United States alone, and how she represented herself as a caged butterfly. It reminded us of all the migrant girls, the death of their innocence, how injustice 

 innocence. We all stood in silence, the same type of silence we experienced six months earlier when we had driven to the border wall near Ciudad Juarez.

I don’t speak through words, I speak through my eyes, that is my true language. I stood with the microphone, staring at the images hanging on the walls, connecting to the photos I had made, going back to the instant of taking the frame, what was happening around me and how it felt. From there I spoke, from what my eyes have seen at home to what they were now witnessing in this new place. One we had never visited before, but that made us all feel so much at home, so easily. We felt the comfort, closeness, and strength--sadness and humor all coalescing at the same time.

We had the opportunity to connect with leaders from the North West Migrants Forum during their weekly Social Café. We spoke with members and visitors, families, adults and kids, who had migrated to the North of Ireland from Russia, Ethiopia, Iran, Syria, Eritrea, Somalia, and elsewhere. Their stories echoed with familiarity, their circumstances were nearly an identical reflection of those who come to the U.S. from Central America and Mexico--the cruelty, the annulation of human rights, and the trauma they live with after crossing the border. There is the loss of freedom, the scarcity of resources, and a vanishing sense of trust and belonging. We tried to absorb as many migrant testimonials as possible, and in the end we cemented future collaboration with the Migrants Forum.

"La Trenza” is a physical and conceptual weaving of objects and clothing that have either crossed borders or been lost along the way. As we collaborate with new communities, the braid begins growing in different directions, becoming more powerful as it unifies stories and entangles migrants and their parallel journeys in different parts of the world. Whether they survived the crossing or not, braiding their stories and their most intimate objects of survival allows us to commemorate 

in places where humans enforce arbitrary borders, from the heavily militarized to the nearly invisible.

I spent a couple of years steering clear of border issues during Covid, due to my inability to keep my eyes open and continue documenting those agonizing realities. But while in the North of Ireland, I asked our host Paul, "How have you been capable of fighting for civil rights for so long? Where do you get the strength to keep going?" He responded, "I will give you the key, it's simple and it's one word: humor!” We took his words to heart as a welcoming gift and reminded ourselves to never let go of this key.

Braiding Histories of Struggle

The U.S.-Mexico border region has for long been a place where art is used as a tool for social change. The different problematic dynamics have catalyzed an art movement focused on protest and solidarity, with many artists building socially-engaged practices that develop alongside and intertwine with their professional careers. This way of making art, however, is not specific to the border region. Countless artists throughout the world have made use of their practices to take advantage of the power of art as a way to communicate ideas, incorporate underrepresented communities, and fight for a more just future.

It is on this stage that LxsDos, consisting of wife and husband team Christian Pardo and Ramon Cardenas, developed and co-curated 

. The team brought together over 30 artists from the border and beyond whose work celebrates, elevates and fights for the betterment of their communities. The exhibition puts forward a collection of work from creators who have worked in the public realm (hence the title

 or ‘free graphics’), combining their social messaging with art accessibility through print, graffiti, street art and other practices that aspire toward mass dissemination of ideas.

The artist selection includes those that have influenced or have been influenced by LxsDos’ practice through the years, as is the case with the work of Mexico City-based collective Gran OM. Aside from displaying an extensive collection of off-set litho prints throughout the space, Gran OM also helped create its identity as well as the lineup posters found in the atrium of Region One Gallery in El Paso, Texas where the show was hosted.

Active since 2006, the collective creates graphic visuals imbued with deep, direct messages critiquing our realities while proposing new ways of living. Their work, which ranges from prints and murals to performance art, highlights pervasive socio-political issues pertinent to Mexico and Latin America, particularly farmer’s rights and gender violence. Through their provocative imagery, Gran OM seeks to evoke not only the collective power of the audience, but also our collective right and responsibility to protest.

Caledonia Curry, known as Swoon, is a pioneering artist whose work incorporates social practices and public work through profound, long-term projects that envision and utilize the transformative role of public art in communities. Trained as a printmaker, Swoon often creates large-scale relief prints that she pastes in the streets of the many places where she works.

, the artist shared a collection of prints – some of which are finished off by hand with paints and collage — of her extensive body of work, including a portrait of Sylvia Elena, a victim of femicide in Ciudad Juárez. The artist worked closely with Sylvia’s family during a project she developed in the border city during 2012, an example of Swoon’s commitment to working alongside communities and her special focus on healing trauma through art. 

Juan Carlos Reyes is part of the local contingent of artists whose work is included in the exhibition. Reyes has built a practice as a multimedia artist, with a special focus on muralism and community-engaged projects. Through his experiences, Reyes has engaged underprivileged communities in the city for over ten years through workshops, classes and collaborative projects. For his participation in the exhibition, however, the artist relied on studio art to create a collection of pieces that utilize his knowledge of 3-dimensional art.

" is a mixed media collage depicting three people carrying brick houses on their back, a clear allusion to the migratory essence of the border that has materialized and exploded in recent years, as well as the heaviness of leaving home for an unknown, hopefully safer, place. The same image is replicated in "

", a simple but rough embroidery piece that, through its physicality, alludes to the hardships experienced by those in migration. Reyes’ work allows us to understand that although the exhibition is built around public art, the precise work produced by the participants also incorporates an intricate and detailed studio practice, which informs and is informed by their work produced on and for the streets.

The work of Nabil Gonzalez, El Paso-based artist and educator, probes into the terror of forced disappearances. During the last three decades, Mexico has experienced different waves of missing people. Women, rural students, migrants and other 

 are all victims of a sinister reality that has put the country on high alert, creating a collective psyche in which the country seems to be forever looking for (or easily forgetting) the estimated 100,000 people missing. Gonzalez created the series 

 (Those who are easily forgotten) with monotype print on stonehenge paper, a total of four pieces that depict silhouettes of people with a monochrome scheme, alluding to the countless victims of the violent phenomenon.

By removing detailed features in the human figures, the artist encourages the viewer to imagine who the bodies might belong to, giving space to an interpretation that can go from the personal to the societal. In some of the prints, the silhouettes are faded and mixed, visually expressing the way the victims’ identities and memories fade away, becoming only a number in the statistics of a failed state.

Colombian artist Erre makes a powerful appearance in the exhibition. Her work, which focuses on the representation of women and their role in society through stencil and graffiti, showcases the impact female-identifying artists have been making in the male-dominated field of street art. With striking, colorful, bold illustrations, Erre’s work depicts women in potent roles exhibiting their agency. Not only offering the audience a different way of looking at them, but more importantly, providing an alternative image upon which the younger audience can see themselves reflected. Combining direct messages, such as “

” (Destroy), with young female figures in actions of protest and rebellion, Erre’s work encapsulates the strength women have not only in art, but also in the fight for equality and social justice.

 we find a questioning of the highbrow, contemporary art scenes, which are often elitist and status-quo conforming. Exhibiting work that is found on the streets—which is easily replicated and distributed and often happens under the radar of the law—the creators get rid of the agents that gate-keep what is deemed important or good art (or even just what art is). The exhibition intimately brings the work into a building with a dynamic that—far from confined—offers an alternative, community-focused structure that horizontally validates art and continues to free the mediums.

Perhaps one day, with the help of these artists, we can equally achieve the liberation of oppressed communities across the world.

Gráfica Libre: Art of the Streets

The border cities of El Paso and Juarez have a long history of utilizing visual language in the public sphere as a way to express grievances, joys, and the complex cultures of the borderland. A tradition that stems back to the indigenous pictographs found in Hueco Tanks, unfolds in the 1970’s Chicano murals of Segundo Barrio and in the practice of painting pink crosses around Ciudad Juarez to not let any femicide in the city be forgotten. 

, an exhibit in downtown Juarez’s new gallery Azul Arena, celebrates this community centered history. Curated by LxsDos art, the exhibit showcases over 30 local and international artists that have used their artistic practice as a form of striving towards social equity and justice.

Caledonia Curry also known as Swoon is one of the artists included in this roster of exceptional creatives. As one of the pioneers of early street art, her career of over 20 years is an inspiring example of how you do not have to restrict yourself to one medium to create your visual voice. Swoon has built and lived on rafts in the Hudson River, created installations and stained glass windows, and wheat-pasted murals throughout the world as a form of storytelling.

On a windy winter day I met Swoon in her Brooklyn studio. We sat and talked about the mural she created in Ciudad Juarez, what street art is currently inspiring her, and her new film project. Read the interview below.

People see your work in exhibitions and in murals you do but it all starts somewhere. Tell us a bit about your studio practice.

My studio practice with the works that are in that show is a little different than what it is now. Now I'm working on a really unusual project for me, which is that I am developing a novel and then also a film connected to it. So it's like this whole kind of story world. So I'm writing a lot. Yesterday I was just researching actors to think about casting.

Yeah, it's a narrative feature. I'm also making a little oracle deck that goes with it. So it's all these kinds of things. With the works that are in the show, it was a lot more like I would get these huge slabs of linoleum and paper and really set to work making these large scale portraits. That would take kind of weeks and weeks, just like drawing and carving and refining and printing and making sure it all worked. And I'm still doing a tiny bit of printmaking but for this upcoming project, I'm doing a lot more drawing and writing and kind of almost processes that feel a little softer, just more varied.

Just because a story came into my mind and I wrote it down. I was like, “wow, that's so funny, I'm writing a story.” It just came out and it was totally bizarre and it just wouldn't go away. I had always wanted to animate since I was in college but I was way, way, way too hyper back then. So it kind of took until I turned 40 and needed a break from the world to actually start animating.

Let’s talk about the mural you created for Silvia Elena Rivera in collaboration with Waka. Can you tell me a little bit about her story? And the process of making this portrait based on her life?

It started kind of a long time ago, actually. I was taking this overland trip from the U.S. to Mexico, like riding trains and kind of doing all this hitchhiking. The thing about traveling that way that really surprised me is that you have this idea that the U.S. and Mexico have a hard border and that they're very different but when you travel overland, you're like this is a soft border in fact. We're very connected and that was my first time looking at that and being like this is not so separate as some people like to tell us.

So, I had seen all these crosses all over town in Juarez and I asked the person that we were riding with what is that? He said that's for the women that are being killed. I didn't know anything about it. It was one of those things where then I started to learn about it and I was like, you know, this feels like related to the thing of the soft border.

We learned about the situation and about the activism around the situation. We also met with community groups and did some workshops. Then I met Ramona Morales. She is just very, very involved with her daughter, Silvia Elena, who had been one of the first people to go missing in this epidemic and she just stayed with it. She stayed organizing, she stayed involved. I just really admired her for that. She really took her grief and turned it into a form of resistance, to try to fight for justice for other daughters and to help mothers who are going through the same thing. I just asked her if I could draw her daughter and later she said that it was kind of a second memorial for her.

Talk to me a bit about collaborating with other artists. Why is that important to you? What is challenging?

I think the reason it's important for me is the same as what the challenges are. It's because working with other people is always going to push you to think in ways that you don't already think.

Sometimes collaboration starts with you kind of resisting what is going on and what doesn't make sense to you and then after you relax, you're like, “Oh my God, this is totally brilliant. I never would have worked in this way. I wouldn't have even gotten this way. That's why I was resisting that, because my brain couldn't conceptualize it. But in fact, now I just learned this amazing thing.” So that's one of the big, big, big joys of working in that way is how it just stretches you in as an artist. But also it's about community, we build those networks and rely on each other.

You have exhibited in private gallery space and of course your work lives in the public sphere. Where do you feel most connected?

I feel like for me there's a kernel that matters the most and it's not about the street or the fancy gallery, it's about the kid that I was when I grew up in Florida. I really want my work to have intense rigor but I also want to be accessible and sometimes it puts me in a funny position, in regards to the art world.

One of the projects that I have been inspired by recently has been the Unmute Gaza project because I really feel like it’s allowing street art to be like this communication across boundaries and in public spaces. For me, that's still like the beating heart of street art. That's where I started. In this very do it yourself and just reclaim the space kind of spirit.

In Conversation: SWOON

 (now) that protests are not the most effective ways to convince those in power to, as my mom would say, 

 (be conscientious, think of others, change).

To the contrary, protests—whether they are in the form of a march, press conference, public comments, social media, or a mural in the middle of the Rio Grande’s embankment or in our barrios—are often seen by those in power as a reason to double-down.

The beauty of protests lies in their ability to change the way people see themselves, their struggles, their worth, and their own power.

The work of LxsDos, protests injustice by placing the working class people of our border at the center, celebrating them as ingenious protagonists. The ingenuity of the people, el pueblo, is manifested in their ability to survive harsh working conditions and inhumane and hypocritical immigration policies and practices—all laden with the belief that the working class people of/at our border are exploitable, dispensable and easily replaceable. The work of LxsDos defies these beliefs.

The protagonists featured in LxsDos’ murals are both ingenious and boldly indigenous. They have beautiful dark, brown skin both from their indigenous and mestizo ancestry and from working under the relentless sun. Their indigenous features and stoic defiance exude this truth: their very existence is an act of resistance.

There is no denying that placing Black, Brown, and Yellow skin on a beautiful, “larger than life” art piece is a form of protest, particularly now and particularly along the Mexico/Texas border. The two LxsDos murals that I will be referring to are “Operation Hold the Line” and “

The Operation Hold the Line is a mural of a woman laying down on her side, cradling a child. Her skin is the color of the earth and her body stretches along both sides of the border. She is the desert, the desert is she. She is covered by inhumane immigration policies dating back to 1993, when Customs and Border Patrol (CPB) implemented Operation Hold the Line. Her shirt shows the desert at its most fertile when its vegetation can shield both migrants and Border Patrol agents. Her pants show a caravan of families and also skulls, because the desert has become a shallow graveyard for thousands of immigrants who have not survived the dangerous journey to the “American Dream.”

The Border Patrol’s white and green suburban is flanked by a CBP agent wearing a green uniform and a jaguar mask, symbolizing the agent’s own Latinx/immigrant ancestry and duality. Indeed, along the southern U.S. border and certainly in El Paso, federal law enforcement is one of the best paying employment opportunities for Latinx youth, many of whom come from working class families, speak some Spanish, and accept the nickname of “Dream Crushers.”

Recruitment starts early in the law enforcement classes taught in over 900 high schools in Texas. Three of these schools are in El Paso County and featured in the documentary “At the ready”, directed by Maisie Crow. Operation Hold the Line was established in 1993 in El Paso by then Sector Chief Sylvestre Reyes, a native El Pasoan of Mexican descent. Reyes ordered his officers to form a human and vehicle blockade along the border, placing four hundred agents and vehicles every 100 yards from one side of El Paso to the other. Apprehensions dropped by 72%, prompting the federal government to invest and focus on “intercepting and preventing illegal entries at the border” instead of finding and deporting immigrants who had already crossed the border. As the surveillance and militarization of the U.S.- Mexico border grew, so did the number of immigrants who died from drowning, heat exhaustion, hypothermia, and injuries in the dangerous terrain into which they were pushed as they tried to avoid CBP. From 1998 to 2022, more than 8,000 immigrants died along the U.S. Mexico border.

As if this wasn’t enough, in March of 2021, Texas State Governor Greg Abbott launched Operation Lone Star, using over $4 billion in state funds and the Department of Public Safety and Texas National Guard to arrest and detain immigrants, most of them asylum seekers from Venezuela, on trespassing charges. In July 2023, Governor Abbott ordered the placement of orange river buoys with serrated saw blades on the Rio Grande and concertina wire to prevent immigrants from reaching U.S. soil to surrender to CBP agents as part of the asylum process.

Texas, the state with the highest number and percentage of Hispanics in the construction industry (61 percent), has just prohibited local rules that mandated water breaks for construction – this during the hottest summer on record. Again, for those in power, BIPOC are disposable whether they are on their way here or on the job.

Meanwhile, across the border in Cd. Juarez, Central and South American immigrants struggle to survive harassment by the cartels and law enforcement. On March 27, 2023, forty immigrants died in a fire at a federal detention center while law enforcement officers did nothing to save them. Prior to the fire, the mayor of Juarez had asked the public to stop giving the migrants food and money so that they would be motivated to work and ordered police to arrest the migrants.

While these efforts have been aimed at pushing immigrants south, the U.S. has failed to address what is pushing immigrants north. As Ramon Cardenas explains, “This mural also makes reference to the effects of imperialism—meaning the effects of decades of US foreign policies, sanctions and interventions in Latin America and the Global South in favor of a free economy—that are showing up at our door in the form of caravans of hundreds of thousands of people who have been forced to leave their homes due to extreme poverty, climate change, corrupt governments, drug and human trafficking.”

This mural is based on a vendor who used to sell her merchandise on the Santa Fe International Bridge. She and other vendors used to benefit from the long passenger vehicle lines heading north into El Paso at the various ports of entry. LxsDos interviewed her and other street vendors who have recently been displaced from the bridge by Mexican officials and are only allowed to sell further south on Avenida Juárez, making them more vulnerable to gang and cartel quotas, and being mugged because they rely on a cash economy. In addition, such restrictions make it harder to earn a living as it pushes them away from buyers.

The street vendors are just like any other person who isn’t born into a trust fund and has to work—they hope their work can provide for the “now” and the “later.”

The “now” probably consists of having: a consistent schedule and paycheck; work and life balance; the ability to afford a safe and healthy home, reliable transportation, daycare, healthcare, food, and recreation; access to regular bathroom and lunch breaks; little to no exposure to work hazards, like pollution and close proximity to vehicles, harassment, cartel threats. The “later” probably consists of having: the ability to retire at a reasonable age; a retirement or a pension plan; a home that is paid off; children who have better opportunities than you did; a body that hasn’t been completely broken by your work. Street vendors in Cd. Juarez lack all of these things and yet, rather than facilitate what is honest, hard work, the government has chosen to make their work even harder.

Despite that, the vendors still muster the enthusiasm required to deal with sales and constant rejection. Their ingenuity is showcased in the ways their bodies function as a mobile store, piling for instance, hats on top of hats on top of their heads. The source of this resilience is tucked away in the pockets of the woman’s shirt in the form of people—her people —including those yet to be born, those who depend on her to survive, and her ancestors, symbolized by the indigenous masks she carries.

LxsDos: Ingenious + Indigenous

Two buzzards circle gracefully above dozens of crosses adorned with Mexican, Salvadorian, and Guatemalan flags. Bottles of water, framed photographs, religious ornaments, toys, and teddy bears sanctify this makeshift graveyard. On June 27th, a tractor trailer was found abandoned on this dusty stretch of service road. Inside were piles of bodies of migrants being smuggled to the United States, left to suffocate and die of dehydration and heat exhaustion. Many of the dead were children and young adults fleeing poverty and gang violence, en route with the promise of a better life.

Quintana Road runs parallel to the Interstate 35, a major trade route that begins in Laredo, Texas on the Mexico border and travels north through the centre of the country to Duluth, Minnesota on the Canadian border. It is a dead end. “La boca del lobo” (“the mouth of the wolf") is how some locals describe this dark, isolated stretch of road, readymade for human traffickers to exploit. Aside from the buzzards, there are few signs of life here, save for those like us, who have come to pay respects and absorb the gravity of 53 stolen lives, and the countless families left devastated with no recourse.

In the middle of the DIY memorial, a small cross with a message: "

R.I.P. 53. How many more deaths Gregg Abbott?

" - a reference to the current and much reviled governor of Texas, whose border patrol policies (also for his stance on abortion and gun control) have made the migrant passage north even more treacherous. Abbott and Senator Ted Cruz as expected, blamed the Biden administration’s lax immigration policies, skirting the responsibility for the malicious practices of Border Patrol agents whose well-documented litany of abuses has made a brutal and inhumane situation exponentially more disgusting and unimaginable.

Abbott and Cruz stand tall in the milieu of right-wing conservative lunatics (the left isn’t much better these days) who have taken a stranglehold over the nation—deranged and cruel “representatives” who spend their time dismantling the legal protections and human rights of “minority” communities. They are pushing forward, in no uncertain terms, an ugly, violent agenda of white supremacy, conjuring eugenics and utilizing a cabal of race traders to facilitate the expedited degradation of the country’s moral fabric towards a militarized, fascist state. The one they always dreamed of; the one they feel entitled to as a birthright.

I have witnessed the darkness of society in places all over the world: in slums, refugee camps, and war zones. Yet standing across from this ad-hoc monument to the loss of innocent life - the doppelgänger to the Alamo, a monument celebrating human depravity in “the greatest country in the world,” - I felt in that moment truly defeated, immobilized by a poisonous cocktail of sadness and rage. All the politics and policies, all the lip-service to social change, all the thoughts and prayers, cannot offer a solution to the black hole of human greed. Power and money are the only governing principles in this so-called democracy, and seemingly everywhere else in the world. The US’ greatest export: selfish individualism and violent ambivalence, now the essential fabric of globalization. I honestly do not see a way forward or a way out, but I am reminded that 

We stand in silence watching the buzzards, wiping away the tears that evaporate more quickly than the sweat that pours down our backs in the scorching desert heat. “They aren’t so pretty up close,” my friend says. “But they fly beautifully, doing their work cleaning up after the world.”

Mouth of the Wolf

Growing up in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico and El Paso, Texas has taught me about change and stillness, transitions and numbness, roadless desert journeys, hiding while seeking…. The border is a mirror reflecting a distorted reality, two places crashing into one another and impacting each other, while we, the people living here, stand in the middle observing and absorbing all of it—the birth of subcultures and the daily visual shock that unfailingly pulls us down into the same abyss, time after time.

After eighteen years spent researching, witnessing, and photographing the human impact of borders in different countries, it is very easy to lose hope in humanity. Although I have always tried to find the light in the middle of so much darkness, sometimes I cannot find it, especially while standing in a place that is constantly on fire. For political and humanitarian reasons, it would be too painful to keep my eyes open when the most fragile among us are burning. It is the impossible stories, the courage, and the “talking eyes” of the people I meet that give me the strength to keep my own eyes open. 

The most common phrase I hear is: "There is NO JUSTICE." It is an expression of fragility, a mantra of the displaced that seeks to encompass the gripping journey and the feeling of not belonging anywhere—the complete and utter terror of having no alternative but to carry your child in your arms and walk into the desert toward an uncertain horizon. Most of us could not endure the type of journey that migrants embark upon with such strength or bravery. Their selflessness is the embodiment of courage and love because their decisions are driven by the instinct to protect their families, no matter how desperate their situation. I have learned during these years of documenting border stories that preserving the life of children is almost always the reason a person risks it all and dares to undertake this perilous journey. They are brave because there are no other options.

In July 2022, I reconnected with Siddhartha Joag, who was visiting El Paso with Declan MacLaughlin, a singer-songwriter from the North of Ireland, and Michael Marinez, an artist from San Antonio for an ArtsEverywhere project. I hadn’t seen him in 10 years and I was excited to drive them around and show them a "deeper" side of the border. I picked them up on a Tuesday morning and drove them to breakfast for the classic Burritos at Crisostomo. I was so glad to see they ordered the spiciest of food, so I knew then it would be a fearless day and we could go anywhere. We only had one day, so right after breakfast we went directly to the wall, the strongest symbol of the border, the cut. We parked and walked on the American side and I knew we would be approached by the border patrol within minutes but I still took the quiet risk. We then crossed to the Mexican side and I was so content to be driving them in the silence of the journey. There was no need to talk at that moment. It was a day of sharing personal stories, comfortable silences, writing, thoughts, and personally waking up for months of numbness to this eclectic group of artists.

I hadn’t photographed anything related to the border since "What Remains” (2019), a series of contemporary still-life images documenting the objects that immigrants carry on their journeys and discard before crossing into the USA. I got too close to the caravans, the people, the stories of pain and loss coming from South America and Mexico all at once. I had to stop documenting for my own safety and sanity; it was becoming too hard to take photographs and “keep my eyes open,” then come back home to the experience of being a new mother to Max and Bruno, my two little loves. When the pandemic hit, a few dear friends and I focused our energy on collecting donations for different asylum shelters in Ciudad Juarez and El Paso, while we adapted to our new “normality."

Around the same time, I started working on a new project with Dr. Adriana Alvarez, a childhood friend who was also raised on the border and with whom I had collaborated on and off since 2014. We were sharing ideas about how to encapsulate the physical and psychological impacts of the migrant's experience: the trauma of the journey, family separation, bilingualism, cultural and lifestyle adaptations, the aftermath that unfolds after making the crossing itself. These experiences had informed both of our individual life-stories and we saw an opportunity to integrate her doctoral dissertation and my photography to create a stronger conceptual and visual body of work. Soon after, Adriana and her team invited me to the University of Colorado Boulder’s Crown Institute to collaborate on a research project called “Trust and Belonging and Circles de Confianza.” This is when I began to understand the story of migration as a generational process that extends long after families find new ways of living after “settling" in the United States.

I took the ArtsEverywhere team to various sites in El Paso and Ciudad Juarez, explaining the terrain and its history. During a drive along the wall on the Mexican side of the desert, memories of “What Remains” came back to life unexpectedly. We found a cemetery of discarded objects and clothes that migrants were forced to leave behind before climbing over the tall, iron fence. We got out of the car and absorbed the scene in the noontime heat of a desert summer. There were dozens of plush toys that seemed to have been carefully arranged under the bushes. As we stood there contemplating what the teddy bears and books might have represented to the children who carried them, it felt like we had all sunk into the sand along with their toys.

Days after, I was speaking with two artist friends, Iris Morales and Mabel Weber, about what happened that afternoon at the border when Mabel came up with an idea. She suggested that we transform the objects into “La Trenza,” a sacred braid woven ritualistically by women, as was done in ancient times, to unify and honor the stories and the lives of those who left the objects behind. Thinking about the act of collecting these objects felt like a punch in the gut, but at the same time I felt I had to do it—in my own way to help rescue and recover some of the stories forgotten in the desert of Mexico. The next day I went back to the site accompanied by my brother Marco, who had offered to help me put the clothes and toys in bags. I had to disconnect from my body and myself in order to touch so many objects that looked like they belonged in a holocaust museum. We left ten minutes later without gathering all the clothes after both of us experienced moments filled with unbearable fear and pain and a very known darkness emanating from the borderlands where we grew up. We just had to leave. At that moment I had no way of knowing that we would travel back to this scenario in our minds, again and again, as we continued documenting stories of migration on the American side.

In October 2022, Adriana and I drove three hours from Boulder to the Rocky Mountain town of Glenwood Springs near the Roaring Fork valley, home to several immigrant communities, where we'd begin the next phase of “What Remains.” The valley extends south to Aspen, where most immigrants find work in the service industry at high-end ski resorts. Guided by the concept of 

—the braid—our intention was to connect and unite intimate objects from the “found-stories” as a means of metaphorically erasing the border by weaving together the journey from both sides into one. Adriana had the idea that participants in Colorado should begin the braid, so we solicited donations from a few families and gathered the objects together—intimate material possessions that had accompanied them on their journeys. During the photograph sessions and interviews that followed, the families shared incredible stories of survival and resolve.

During the trip, we met Daisy, a teenage girl, who was nine years old when she crossed the border with her mother and was aggressively ordered to drop her teddy bear in the desert by the "coyote," the Mexican guide who had been hired to lead them across the desert graveyard to the wall. Her mother explained to us that 

 moment had been the most difficult part of the journey—when her daughter’s most precious belongings had to be left behind in the middle of nowhere. The forcible separation from her best friend, companion, and comfort object represented the ripping apart of the only life she had ever known. Her mother promised to buy her a new one when they reached the USA, but Daisy told her: "It will never be the same, it will never be my teddy bear."

Daisy waited until the last moment before jumping the fence to leave her teddy bear behind. Once she and her mother crossed the threshold, there were no more directions, no more guides, no more roads. They walked for two days before turning themselves in to Border Patrol agents because they could not stand the hunger and the pain. They spent days in a holding tank known as “the freezer,” where they were interrogated repeatedly and became sick because the temperature in the rooms was so cold. After three days, Daisy and her mother were deported back to Mexico and had to find a way to survive and struggle to reunite with the rest of their family who were now living in the US.

Daisy’s story is one of many we documented on the US side of the border. We asked participants: Was your journey worth it? Would you do it again? What objects did you bring with you that where crucial to you and could not be left behind? What happened to those possessions? Do you still have them now? We learned a great many details about how those precious objects saved them or harmed them during their journey.

Yeni, a mother of two, remembered having to decide what shoes to take with her. “It was winter and I chose some rain boots thinking they would protect me from the cold, the spiky desert plants, and the animals we might encounter. But I didn’t think that if nothing can come in through those boots, then neither can anything go out. So my feet got wet and blistered as I walked for days in the desert of Arizona. During the night I would take them off to see if they would dry a little, and the small group of people traveling with me would all come close and all surround my feet with theirs so I could warm them up. I will never forget this gesture that got me through those unbearable days. Of course, my boots never dried.”

“It almost feels like I auto-kidnapped myself,” conceded another migrant we interviewed. “I cannot get out of this country ever and I chose to come here, but the American dream is nowhere to be seen. I graduated with a doctorate in Mexico, and here I am cleaning houses and doing the jobs that Americans don’t want to do.”

Unfortunately, this phenomenon replicates and metastasizes along the border. Although there are so many stories to be told, "What Remains” is a platform for visibility and an intimate illumination of the journeys undertaken by 

 and migrants on both sides of the Mexico-US border. Some who agreed to participate in “What Remains” chose to share their true identities, others preferred to remain anonymous, while others asked us to show only the objects that tell a story themselves. This was requested for their safety and protection.

This experience is profoundly interconnected with my personal story, the most sacred place, the only place where I can create from. It has also taught me that my work can only go so far through photography. The revival of "What Remains" with a focus on process and collaboration has given birth to new and meaningful ideas, as well as the potential of a powerful multi-disciplinary reach into the arts, education, activism, and social justice. This is beyond anything that I could have ever achieved alone.

No Justice on the Horizon

While memory creates a place for the past to exist, border artists use the past to challenge and understand the present. Their art and its ability to activate memory is made even more powerful through the coming together of visual images within a place with deep historical and contemporary meanings. The U.S.-Mexico border is more than a space, more than a geographical location. It is a place with layers of history and with a multitude of meanings.

The U.S.-Mexico border has long been a lightning rod for controversy around issues of identity, national sovereignty, migration, and border security. Although El Paso and Ciudad Juárez share history, familial ties, culture, and economics, the border is a contested region. La frontera of El Paso and Ciudad Juárez is more than a space where the two nations come together. It is a space with extraordinary meaning; it is a place that is beloved by some and feared by others. It is a place that politicians use to draw voters. It is home to over 2.7 million people, the second largest metroplex along the U.S.-Mexico border. And, as importantly, la frontera is a place of art and creativity.

A border wall divides the two cities. Driving along the Border Highway, one can see Border Patrol vehicles and, more recently, State Police and National Guard. The Texas governor orders increasing lengths of barbed wire to be placed along the Rio Grande, which divides the two nations. The atmosphere of militarization is palpable. The power of these artists’ work is rooted in the ways in which they challenge this process of dehumanization, to create new connections over time, and to help us look to the future.

The significance of art and place made itself evident to me one morning in February 2023, when I noticed a new mural going up as I drove into the Segundo Barrio in El Paso, Texas, one of the most historic Mexican immigrant neighborhoods in the United States. There on the corner of S. Stanton and E. 3rd Street on the walls of a tenement building was an image I was familiar with—a bracero being sprayed in the face with DDT, a pesticide banned by the United States in 1972 for its harmful effects on humans and animals. The mural by Victor “Mask” Casas evokes the little-known history of the millions of men, braceros, recruited by the United States as temporary laborers between 1942 and 1964. The original image of the man sprayed with DDT, captured in 1956 by documentary photographer Leonard Nadel, speaks to the humiliation endured by the men who were told to strip down, wait in line, and suffer the degrading inspection process to enter the United States. To the right of the bracero is the image of stereotypical “pioneers.” A white man holds his rifle in front of him as he stares into the distance while a woman, presumably his wife, holds on to his arm. In the mural, we see a glimpse of a man on horseback. This scene, based on a well-known 1938 painting by Tom C. Lea III, comes from a mural in the El Paso Federal Courthouse, titled “Pass of the North.” Above the Lea mural is a quote that reads “O Pass of the North/ Now the Old Giants are Gone/ We Little Men Live Where Heroes/ Once Walked the Inviolate Earth.”

What happens when Casas combines images from the Nadel photos with the Lea painting? What even deeper meaning does the mural embody through its location on the exterior walls of a historic tenement? We discover an ancestral history that has been silenced over the last two centuries. The history of settler colonialism, as represented by Lea’s pioneers, and of oppression and exploitation of Mexican workers, as documented by Nadel, come together in Casas’ mural to conjure memories, and suggest a relationship between the two historical periods. Its location on a tenement building in the Segundo Barrio creates yet another connection. Generations of Mexican immigrants have created their lives in that barrio, raising families, working to build the economy of El Paso, and like the braceros, working hard, willing to make sacrifices 

On the U.S. side of the U.S.-Mexican border, racist and discriminatory educational policies have invisibilized Mexican and Mexican American history. According to the master narrative, the most touted history of El Paso del Norte dates only to the early 19th century when white men entered northern Mexico in search of opportunity followed by a period of the “Old West” featuring gunslingers. There are references to Spanish conquistadores throughout the city, of course, but the millennia-long history of Indigenous people and the centuries of settlement by Mexicans are cast aside.

Casas’ mural challenges this narrative by focusing instead on Mexican men crossing the border into the United States in the mid-20th century in order to work. The Bracero Program (1942-1964), the largest movement of temporary workers into the United States in U.S. history, is not taught in K-12 and only superficially mentioned in higher education classes. Yet, the image of the “pioneer” is all too familiar, portrayed in art, textbooks, and popular culture. Casas’ mural confronts this exclusion, asking us to remember what happened after the arrival of the “pioneers” and to recollect the stories that are alive in our own families. By contextualizing the work of artists in relation to the U.S.-Mexico border, and in some cases, in specific locations in El Paso and Juárez, we can see the layers of meaning behind each work of art. It was seeing this mural go up in the Segundo with images that there so familiar but that I had never seen placed alongside each other that inspired this new way for me to understand the power of border art.

I’d love for them to have the power to come back home.”

Victor “Mask” Casas in a self-taught artist, an Iraq war vet, and a prolific muralist. He grew up in the Segundo Barrio. In 2021, Casas along with Marco Sánchez created the mural “Repatriate our Veterans,” on a busy street bordering the local military base, Fort Bliss. Having served three tours of Iraq over eight years, he says that the creating a mural that is both honoring the veterans who have been deported and is a call to action to bring them back “just hits home.” Casas continues, “I’d love for them to have the power to come back home. They served their country.” A 2021 documentary “American Exile” estimates that the United States has deported 94,000 veterans, many of them combat veterans who returned from war with physical and emotional wounds. It is the long-term effects of combat, such as PTSD, that often lead veterans to turn to drugs to cope. Deportation removes the possibility of receiving treatment from the VA. While violent offenses like murder have long been a reason for deportation, the Clinton Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 widened the scope of offenses and removed judicial discretion, leading to the government deporting veterans for a variety of offenses. The 2021 Biden executive order, Immigrant Military Members and Veterans Initiative, allowed some veterans to return, but there are still thousands of deported veterans in Mexico and their allies continue to fight to bring them home. “Repatriate our Veterans” makes a powerful statement, reinforced by its location long associated with the military and a street frequented by countless soldiers.

Another Casas mural, located in Sunland Park, New Mexico, just minutes from El Paso, portrays the migration of humans and animals, including butterflies, bats, and hummingbirds. Casas says, “To me, there's a clear message that it's very natural to live and migrate.” Indeed, human history is the history of migration. Casas painted the mural, created in honor of National Endangered Species Day in 2021, on the exterior wall of Carlos Bakery. It is compelling both in its message that migration is natural but also in its location in Sunland Park.

Sunland Park is a small border city located on the New Mexico-Chihuahua border at the foot of Mount Cristo Rey. Named after the 29-foot-tall limestone sculpture of Christ with his arms outstretched, the peak is part of the Juárez Mountains. It divides New Mexico from Chihuahua and represents a popular yet dangerous route for migrants crossing into the El Paso area. In 2021, the 

 reported that two groups climb Mount Cristo Rey: faithful Catholics who each year make a pilgrimage to its summits and “migrants from around the globe trying to enter the United States undetected, for here there is no border wall.”

Ironically, on Memorial Day 2019, a “border wall” was built on private property near Sunland Park. A Go Fund me campaign for “We Build the Wall” raised $25 million for a wall that is a half mile long and cost $6-8 million to build. In 2020, prosecutors accused the organizers of taking thousands of dollars for their personal use. Of the four founders of this group, two pled guilty to wire fraud in 2022. One was convicted of wire fraud conspiracy, falsifying records, and conspiring to launder money. One was pardoned by then President Trump. The wall is not actually on the border and has no real function other than to remind people of Trump’s promise to build a wall. It is within that context of hope embodied by Christ with his arms outstretched and threats represented by the fake border wall, that Casas’ mural about migration exists.

The mural’s profound message—migration is natural—contrasts with the brutal reality that Sunland Park has seen increasing numbers of migrant deaths in recent years as it becomes more difficult to cross the border. In 2017, the federal government built a border wall in Sunland Park, making the act of crossing more difficult while at the same time, migrants wanting to cross the border are pushed into more dangerous terrain outside Sunland Park. With summers that are increasingly brutal with temperatures consistently above 100 degrees, the media reports migrant deaths weekly. Government policy, both federal and state, has pushed migrants from across the globe into crossing the border through this place in New Mexico. For example, Texas governor Greg Abbot has employed the National Guard in El Paso, following the Border Patrol’s long-executed “Prevention through Deterrence” policy that consciously seeks to push migrants into increasingly dangerous places. As a result, migrant deaths have increased greatly. In 2015, authorities reported two migrant deaths in New Mexico. In 2023, there were at least 109, mostly around Sunland Park. In the context of increasing violence against migrants in the area around Sunland Park, Casas’ work reminds us of the humanity of those coming to the border.

Ser visibles es una forma de resistencia.

Perras Bravas, a women’s art collective founded in Ciudad Juárez in 2018, strives to make women’s experiences, feelings, and desires visible in urban public spaces. To be visible is to resist misogyny and violence against women. The identities of Perras Bravas are anonymous, and their numbers fluctuate, but their commitment to empowering women remains constant. They are dedicated to making visible “

el arte de mujeres por y para mujeres en el espacio público

.” Emerging after a gathering sponsored by their sister organization, Morras Pintando Muros, for over five years, the collective has offered workshops on muralism, graffiti, paste-up, and stenciling geared towards empowering women and girls.

The social and political context of their work is significant. In the early 2000s, Juárez gained international notoriety for the increasing numbers of femicides, with Amnesty International reporting 370 women and girls killed in Juárez and Ciudad Chihuahua between 1993 and 2005. In 2002, a group of women formed Ni Una Mas to bring international awareness of the killings and to call people to action against femicide. Nuestras Hijas de Regreso a Casa A.C., an NGO founded in 2001 by mothers and friends of killed and disappeared young women, also fights to increase awareness despite the threats of violence, and even assassination attempts, against its co-founder. As reporter Denise Ahumada wrote in 2022, protests have not been enough. "

Tomar las calles y alzar la voz para manifestarse en fechas o conmemoraciones ha sido insuficiente, por lo que el arte urbano, como el Paste Up, se ha convertido en una herramienta utilizada por colectivas como Bravas para hacer el reclamo presente y visible

.” That is precisely what this collective of “

” does by placing their consciously political work in public spaces. Using stencils, paste up, graffiti, and murals the collective frames their work as “interventions,” group actions intended to make a change.

In 2021, Perras Bravas facilitated a series of workshops that resulted in “

,” a mural featuring women’s faces amid desert plants. Both women and plants are survivors in a hostile environment. The mural was the creation of both the members of the collective and community participants in a series of workshops at La Promesa, located in the southwestern section of Juárez. La Promesa, also organized as an art collective and art space, works towards the prevention of domestic violence as well as creating jobs, and empowering women, youth, and children.

Working in this area of Juárez tells us a great deal about commitment of Perras Bravas to work with vulnerable populations. Along with the central part of the city, southwestern Juárez is known for its poverty and violence. Its residents describe living there with the lack of basic services, including electricity, water, garbage collection, pavement, and public transportation. Professor of urban planning María Teresa Vázquez at the Autonomous University of Ciudad Juárez writes that the sale of permits to build homes in areas without adequate services has increased social problems, especially in southwest Juárez. Taking art outside of venues that are inaccessible to residents of areas like the southwestern part of the city, and furthermore, encouraging women to be the creators of their own art, Perras Bravas challenges the status quo, creating a new paradigm of visibility and power for women and girls in impoverished barrios.

In 2023, Perras Bravas hosted a paste up workshop to demand justice for 26-year-old Isabel Cabanillas de la Torre, an artist and women’s rights activist, who was murdered in 2020. Cabanillas’ friends reported her missing in January 2020 when she did not return home. She was found murdered, two gunshots in her body and next to her bicycle. Cabanillas was active with numerous groups, including Mesa de Mujeres, an organization working against domestic violence, and Hijas de su Maquilera Madre, an anti-capitalist women’s collective that works against femicide, forced disappearances, and trafficking. Harkening back to Perras Bravas’ 

, the timeline created by Mesa de Mujeres is titled “

.” While women often disappear in Juárez’s urban spaces, their bodies often appear in the desert. The desert in these cases becomes another place of multiple meanings. It is where lifeless bodies of kidnapped, tortured, and murdered women are hidden out of the view of urban crowds, but it is also a place of strong and resilient women. In a 2021 article for 

, journalist Hérika Martínez Prado summed up the theme of 

la fuerza de las mujeres que han resistido a lo largo de los años, floreciendo en un entorno hostil propio de un desierto

Cabanilla’s murder, a femicide, evoked protests in Juárez and Mexico City.In 2023, Perras Bravas reported on their Instagram account that they were part of a nighttime march honoring Cabanillas on the third anniversary of her murder. Accompanying the post is an image of a paste-up with the message, “

Hay una herida abierta que no cierra. Sangramos rabia hasta que la justicia llegue

.” In 2024, Perras Bravas continued their advocacy on behalf of the memory of Cabanillas, four years after her murder, participating in a commemorative bike ride, her beloved activity, and doing a paste-up in her memory. The “Paste Up x Isa” invited community members to paste the posters on walls during the event. The work is communal; it invites all women to participate in envisioning a new society that is neither misogynistic nor capitalistic.

Marco Sánchez is a prolific artist, working in printmaking, painting, and woodworking. Born in Ciudad Juárez and living in El Paso, he writes that his work “examines the nuances of life in this Binational region… developing a greater affinity for the region.”Sánchez is the grandson of artist Guillermo Cordero Enriquez, a Michoacan painter and printmaker. He recalls that he “wasn’t really interested in art…” until he stopped to visit his 

 in 2007 during a visit to Zirahuén, Michoacan. “I hadn’t seen his studio or him actively working on a painting since I was five years old, when he moved from Juárez to Zirahuen. It ignited a curiosity in me to grab a paint brush and start messing around on canvas.” He does on to ask, “Who keeps our culture alive, outside the academia?” Sánchez concludes that, “It’s like our abuelitos, our aunts, our uncles, our family members. It starts with our elders. And trying to keep and maintain those roots.”

In 2024, Sánchez created the linocut, “Casualties from the Delusion of Theological Supremacy.” In it, we see a plane carrying a missile. On the ground below is a skeleton with an Israeli flag draped over its left arm. A child throws a rock at the plane. A dead man wearing a keffiyeh lays on the ground, pierced by a missile, while another missile with the Star of David is embedded in the ground near his head. A slice of watermelon is on the ground next to a skull with a stars-and-stripes hat. On the ground is written the message “Enough.” For those viewers who are versed in the Israeli genocidal actions against the Palestinians in Gaza, the imagery is clear. Enough with the murders of Palestinians.

It is reminiscent of Sánchez’s 2019 print, “Six Flags over Countless Bodies.” In this piece, we again see a dead body on the ground although this time it is huge in comparison to the other characters in the piece, like the 18th century Gulliver and the Lilliputians. Again, we see a flag although this time is the Texas flag, with its lone star. A helicopter hovers around the dead man’s feet. A group of three músicos witnesses the scene. In the lower left quadrant, a man on horse rides into the scene, his arm outstretched, pointing a gun in front of him. The two scenes are almost seven thousand miles apart yet Sánchez’s work points to the similarities between the two border regions. From national symbols like flags to the use of military imagery.

“I want to be a voice for the disappeared victims.”


Nabil Gonzalez grew up on the border in El Paso. Although her interest in art began during childhood, at 14, she became aware of the power of art and took her first art class. At 17, while visiting Ciudad Juárez, Gonzalez confronted a dangerous situation where she realized she could have become one of the disappeared women. In thinking about how to “be a voice” for the disappeared women, she concluded that art is “The only language that allows me to go beyond borders and raise questions among present day societies and encourage important conversations amongst ourselves.” Her work is grounded in memory, or put another way, in ensuring that the women are not forgotten. This includes having gathered over 400 names of who were disappeared and/or murdered between 2012 and 2016. As she writes in a 2021 artist statement, “Documenting, discussing, and revealing social issues in the border region is a part of my artistic process.”

creates a poignant and profound space for us to remember missing women. We see three images. One shows a woman’s eye and eyebrow. It is upside down as if we are looking down at the woman lying on the ground with her feet away from us. Beneath is a brown circle with the woman’s name and age and year of disappearance: “Gladys Janeth Fierro. 13 años. 1993.” Finally, on the right side of the piece is another circle: “

estudiante, secuestrada, torturada, violada, desaparecida, estrangulada

.” Through the use of twelve words, we are told to remember this young girl’s life. She was disappeared in 1993, but we also understand that she was found because we learn she was tortured, raped, and strangled. Gladys is not simply a statistic or even just the victim of gender violence. She is a student, and a girl at the beginning of teenagerhood.

In 2021, Gonzalez exhibited a collection of works, including monotype printing, Xerox transfer, charcoal, collage, and sand, titled “Who are you?” in Decatur, Illinois.On the border, these two questions embody layers of meaning. The inquiry of “who are you?” goes well beyond the typical questions of “what is your name?” or “what do you do?”It speaks to questions of national identity, belonging, and exclusion. El Paso and Juárez, with the largest binational and bicultural workforce on the border, has a long history of inviting belonging and forcing exclusion. For example, when the Border Patrol began to dump migrants on the streets in 2018 and 2023, leading to a humanitarian crisis where women, men, and children had nowhere to sleep, no food to eat, and no one to get to their sponsors and relatives in the other parts of the United States, the local community stood up to help. Volunteers donated food and clothes. Annunciation House, founded in 1976, and staffed by volunteers has provided hospitality to thousands of migrants passing through El Paso. Historically, migrants have been welcomed to El Paso. In the context of the recent migration of people from Central and South America as well as other parts of the world, the character of this migration has expanded globally.

In “Who Are You?,” Nabil includes a print with the word “ILLEGAL” on it in large lettering beneath a smaller “Who are you?” On another page, an image of people walking towards the viewer, actually the same image repeated fourteen times, and another page with the same walking character, this time repeated three times with a darkened image walking through what looks like a hole in the paper, complete the art book. At the end is Gonzalez’s artist statement where she references immigration and immigration detention centers adding more layers of meaning to each page.

In a 2024 exhibition at La Mecha Contemporary in El Paso, Nabil exhibited “Where Are You?” This collection of works references immigration.As migrants move northward towards the US-Mexico border, in the hopes of crossing la frontera, “where are you?” is a question that families, parents, husbands, wives, and children ask their relatives during sporadic cell phone conversations. They ask themselves when they lay at night wondering where their loved ones are. If you are familiar with Gonzalez’s body of work on, the question can also harken back to the disappeared women of Juárez. In this context, mothers and families are tormented by the disappearance of their daughters as they too ask, “Where are you?” Nabil employs short, quotidian questions that through her art, become powerful inquiries into US-Mexico border life and policies.

The three border artists and one art collective produce masterful work that is grounded in the day-to-day realities of la frontera. Using art to question the normalcy of violence around social and political issues such as immigration and gender, they call on us to act, not simply react. A strong first step is to acknowledge the humanity of people who the media and politicians often portray as simply statistics or who blame the victim (“How was she dressed?” or “Why did they come to the border when they knew it was dangerous?”) Humanity is at the core of their art.

Having grown up on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border, these artists have a deep understanding of life on the border. From Gonzalez finding herself in a precarious situation as a young woman visiting Juárez to Perras Bravas commemorating the life and feminicide of their friend and colleague, Isabel Casillas, this art is rooted in the lives of the artists; it is not an abstraction. Finally, the location of the art, from Casas’ mural on a tenement building in the Segundo Barrio to Sánchez’s portrayal of a Border Patrol helicopter hovering above a familiar desert landscape, whose noise is a constant for many Paseños, creates even a more powerful experience for the viewer by linking their art to the specific landscape of the border.

The power of place, in this case la frontera, is that it embodies history, memory, injustice and resilience. The power of art is that it can help us see the world around us in a different way. It can make connections. It can bring together people in a place intended to divide people.

La Frontera, US-Mexico Border